Hi, English isn’t my mother tongue so I was asking myself that question since I first encounted a w/… Back then I was like: “What tf does ‘w slash’ stand for?” And when I found out I was like “How, why, and is it any intuitive?” But I never dared to ask that until now

  • yata@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It may not make sense because English isn’t a language designed to make sense; it isn’t even designed.

    To be fair, no living language is.

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      French is heavily managed by the Académie, I guess it depends how you interpret “designed”. English is a much freer language that morphs and absorbs terms from many languages.

      • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I wonder how much of the managed-language sticks vs the emergent-language. I recall years ago there was news of how the academie made up their own word for email.